Biography | Friedrich Joussen — The Rhine Tower Where He Took Vodafone Germany

People remember Friedrich Joussen as the man who later merged two TUI companies.

The long middle of the career was a steel-to-mobile conversion on this riverbank.

He joined Mannesmann AG in Düsseldorf in 1988, after the Aachen diploma and a short American software job.

Heise and later company notices place that start year at the steel group, then at Mannesmann Mobilfunk from 1990 as assistant to the managing board.

From 1997 to 2000 he was marketing managing director of Mannesmann Mobilfunk GmbH.

After Vodafone's takeover of Mannesmann he moved to Global Product Management at the group's Newbury headquarters.

In November 2003 he returned as chief operating officer of Vodafone Germany.

On 1 October 2005 he became chairman of the management of Vodafone Deutschland, succeeding Jürgen von Kuczkowski.

The supervisory board of Vodafone D2 GmbH had confirmed the appointment in Düsseldorf on 5 July 2005.

Vodafone's own release and independent German trade reporting printed the same date.

The glass tower on Mannesmannufer, the former Mannesmann-Hochhaus, was the public face of that company for years.

Egon Eiermann and Paul Schneider-Esleben designed it in the late 1950s for Mannesmann AG.

Vodafone later sold the tower to the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and finished a new campus at Ferdinand-Braun-Platz in 2012.

Joussen left the Germany job at the end of September 2012, on his way to TUI.

The pin is the heritage tower on Mannesmannufer, the building a visitor can still photograph from the Rhine promenade.

It is a public architectural monument, not a private office.

The date on this memory is 1 October 2005, the day the Germany chair took effect.

Photo: Kameister, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons